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A LUCKY lotto winner has walked away with just under $180,000 from a $250,000 ticket after cashing in the top prize of a $5 scratch-off.

Yuridia Gallegos-Echavarrieta, a high school senior from North Carolina, received the winning lottery ticket as a gift from her grandfather.

She was thrilled to learn she had hit it big on her Power 5s scratch-off but had a hard time believing it could be real.

“I think I was in shock,” Echavarrieta said in a statement to the North Carolina Education Lottery.

She had turned 18 just a few months before playing the game.

“I didn’t believe I actually won,” she said.

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“We had to go back to the gas station to check it.”

Her approximate odds of winning the top prize were just 1 in 1,292,630.

Echavarrieta said she immediately told her grandfather about the news.

“He was like, ‘That’s awesome,’” Echavarrieta said.

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He bought the ticket in their town at a Speedway convenience store on Rockford Street.

Echavarrieta claimed her prize at the state lottery office last week.

After subtracting required state and federal tax withholdings, she walked away with $178,126 — about two-thirds of the total prize.

But Echavarrieta did not seem bothered by the smaller sum.

She said she planned on investing her winnings and attending university next year.

Echavarrieta's win is the third top prize of the Power 5s game to be awarded, leaving three $250,000 prizes remaining.

The holidays are a popular time to exchange scratch-off tickets, leading to surprisingly large Christmas gifts for some lucky players.

Another woman in Arkansas played a $5 scratch-off game earlier this month and won $100,000 — her fourth big win in recent times.

And a man who chose to stay anonymous in Massachusettes recently walked away with over $16 million after snagging the top prize of a $50 scratch-off ticket.

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